Chapter 8 face of death

Milina watched the visitor through the cracks in the curtains of the front window.One is Kim, and the other is the person Kim was talking to.The latter was obviously a rich man, so rich that he was a bit out of place in the area.She looked at the man's suit, which seemed to be custom-made, gray hair, smooth, healthy brown skin, all of which showed that he had lived a good life.She believed it was impossible for Kim to bring him here. She guessed wrong, however, and they were headed in that direction. Kim, deliberately dressed as a gypsy, with gold earrings in his ears, was speaking rapidly, gesticulating, and showing his white teeth beneath his mustache.With a smile on his face, the man, led by Jin, walked down the street to the small house that used to be a shop.There is a handwritten sign in front of the door: "Mrs. Milina - Expert Palmistry".The sign doesn't promise anything, so technically, there's no breaking the law.In this area, the police are very tolerant towards the Gypsies. As long as no one complains, the police will turn a blind eye and let them go about their lives.Even so, it was Milena and Kim's last week here, and the neighborhood was about to be gutted and replaced with an expensive parking complex.The workers had already bulldozed the house behind them.

As the two men approached, Milina lowered the curtains and walked to a table at the back of the room.The table was covered with a red silk cloth with golden suns, moons, and stars. Milina stroked the thick black hair that fell on her shoulders with her hands. If she could clean it up in time and put on a little makeup, she might be a very beautiful woman.It doesn't matter whether she is beautiful or not, Jin is full of praise for her appearance, and no one else wants her anyway.She sat down at the table and waited. "Here we are, sir," said Kim, opening the door for the gentleman. "The omniscient, omnipotent gypsy fairy lives here. She only needs to read your handprint to know your past and history." The future. This is Lady Milina."

She nodded to express her agreement with Jin's introduction, and then looked up at the person she brought. He is slightly fatter and has a calm attitude. He is estimated to be in his fifties. He is a person who is used to a wealthy life. kindly. "Sit down, please," she told him. "Thank you," said the man, "to be honest, I'm a little nervous to come to your place like this." "There's nothing to be afraid of." "I believe that," said the man, laughing. "It's not that I've never had a fortune-telling before. I had an appointment that didn't come up, and your..." "He's my husband."

"Your husband is very eloquent." "May I see your hand?" "Does it matter which hand you use?" "The left hand looks at your past, and the right hand looks at your future." The man smiled at her, "I know the past, so it's better to look at the future." He stretched out his right hand and put it on the table, palm up.Milina pretended to study his hands very carefully. "I see you have a business line, this business will be closed soon," Milina said, "it is a great fortune, and the whole process of buying and selling has been smooth."

This is easy to infer.Because that guy always mentioned that he had an appointment, and he would never come to social events when he came to this area. He might negotiate business with the import and export company on the next street.Judging from the man's demeanor and demeanor, he must have made a lot of transactions. In any case, this assumption is reasonable.As for predicting his success...well, man always predicts success.From then on, what Milina wanted to say had to find clues from the person's reaction and the questions she asked, and then make use of them. Kim slipped back into their bedroom through the curtained door.The look in his eyes told Milina to knock the man as much money as she could.If she told the right way, she could easily earn him more than twenty yuan.

However, when she looked up at his face, Milina didn't want to keep counting.Of course, talking doesn't hurt anyone, but she doesn't like to deceive people, especially people with a kind and pure face like this. Suddenly, she froze in the chair and couldn't move.For the man's face began to change. As she gazed at him intently, his healthy tan turned pale, and brown spots gradually appeared on his cheeks.The man leaned back in the chair, and Milina could see the muscles in his face, turning into rotting strips, then blackening and drying away, leaving a naked, mottled skeleton.

"What's the matter?" the man asked, trying to take his hand back.Only then did Milina realize that her nails had dug deeply into the man's muscles.She let go excitedly. "I can't tell you anything," she said, closing her eyes, "now you must go." "Are you unwell?" the man asked, "Is there anything I can do to help you?" "It's nothing, please go back." The door curtain was shaking because Kim was eavesdropping from behind.The man stood up hesitantly. Milina dared not look him in the face. "At least let me pay you," said the man.He took his wallet from the inside pocket of his coat, pulled out a five-dollar bill, put it on the table, and walked out of the shop before Milina looked up at him.

Jin threw open the curtain and walked straight in front of her, "What's wrong with you, Milina, he's a fat sheep, why did you let him go?" Milina looked down at her legs, without saying a word. Kim started yelling, then got himself under control. "Wait! You saw 'that' in his face, didn't you? Seeing a dead man's face." She nodded silently. "Such a rich man! Did you see the money in his wallet?" "Now, all the banknotes in the world are useless to him, and before sunset, he will die." Kim's eyes grew sly.He lifted the door curtain and looked towards the street entrance. "There he is, going to a store down the street," King said, walking toward the store.

"Where are you going?" Milina asked. "Chase him." "No, let him go." "I won't hurt him. There's no need to hurt him. You know better than me that a person with a dead face has no power to prevent his death." "Then why are you chasing him?" "It's only a moment before sundown, and someone should be there for him when he's down. Money's no use to him now, as you said." "You're going to rob a dead man?" "Shut up, you woman. I'm just following him to see where he's going to die, that's all."

After Jin hurried out, Milina didn't say anything more.How strange, she thought!After so many years of walking in the rivers and lakes, pretending to be a palmistry expert, and telling fortunes to others, it is only today that I have seen the faces of dead people so closely. Milina was a happy little girl when this happened.At that time, she, her parents and three other brothers and sisters wandered around with other gypsies, living in peace and enjoying freedom.She was a big, muscular person with a rough laugh and a lot of life.That day, when the father was about to go hunting with his friends, he picked up his little daughter and said goodbye.As she gazed at her father's face, she suddenly began to scream as she saw it begin to decay into a hideous skeleton.

Her father put her down in bewilderment, unable to suppress her hysterical screams. It was a long time after her father went out that she stopped crying and told her mother what she saw. Milina's mother was terrified, and her little daughter was crying again.Mother stopped her crying and told her that she should never, ever tell anyone about seeing her father's face. Then her mother left and sat alone under a tree in the mountains until dark.The two hunter friends returned, but her father was carried back. From that day on, there was no joy in Milina's life. When this happened again, she was twelve years old, and Milina kept her promise and never said what she foresaw on the day her father died.Even so, the scene has always been in her mind, lingering.The mother became cold and distant to her, as if her husband's death was her pity, and she made him die at the gunpoint of others. Milina becomes a lonely, silent girl.She has only one good friend named Mary, a hunchbacked girl.The two often played silently for an hour or so, putting the flowers in the water like a boat and drifting with the current.One fine day in August, Milina saw Mary's face wrinkled into an ugly skeleton again, and she screamed and ran to the next wood, where she remained until dark. When she returned to her place of residence, she found that the gypsies were surrounding something.Milina quietly squeezed into the crowd and saw that it was her friend Mary who was drowned.This time, she confides what she has foreseen to a thin old woman, Mary's grandmother. "What does that mean, Grandma?" she asked. The old woman sat silently for a long time before answering. "Son, what you see is the face of death. Among our species, there may be someone in a generation who has this gift. When you see a face like this, that person will die before sunset. It is not you It’s your fault, but when our people know about it, they will avoid you, they can’t tell the difference between prophecy and crime.” “What should I do? Grandma, I don’t want to be a weirdo.” "I'm sorry, child, I can't help it. As long as you are alive, you will see the death face of the person who is about to die." After that incident, Milina was completely isolated.Whenever she walked into a certain place, the people there were afraid to avoid her.There is only one person in the clan who laughs at the fear of death, and that person is Jin.He was a vigorous, dark-eyed, dark-haired man in his thirties. He noticed Milina who was maturing and growing up very quickly.When he proposed to her and asked her to go to America with him, she agreed immediately. They wandered from city to city in this new country, living off the money Milina made by reading palms and Kim by doing day labor.Milina would see the terrifying "death face" of a stranger in the crowd, and whenever this happened, she would quickly turn her face away and pretend she didn't see anything.Neither she nor Kim are friends.She hadn't seen the "face of death" this close in years, until today. Now, when the first rays of dawn fell through the window on their bed, Milina awoke to find herself lying in bed alone.The back door creaked lightly, and her body wrapped in the blanket tensed up, "Is it gold?" "Yes, softly." "What happened?" "Stop talking, I'll give you all our money .” Milena sat up on the bed, clutching the blankets, and Kim was just a black shadow in the gloom. "Did you get into trouble?" she asked. "You can't blame me. When the man came out of the import and export company, I walked over to talk to him, but he hit me. I just pushed him, and he fell to the ground." "Is that man dead?" Milina said. "Yes, the bad thing is, when I pushed him, someone saw it. I hid all night, but they'll come here for me in a minute. I didn't even get his wallet." Milina got out of bed and straightened her clothes.King lay on his stomach, groping the dark floor with his hands until he found the piece of loose flooring he was looking for.He pulled back the board to take out the banknotes wrapped in oiled paper.Then he stood up and stuffed the banknotes into his shirt, pushed open the curtain, and entered the front shop.He opened the curtain with his hands and looked out. When Milina watched her husband's actions attentively, sunlight came through the curtains and shone on her husband's face. She said in a hasty voice: "They have already arrived, at the intersection." Then, she lowered the curtains, and hurriedly walked to the back door, "Go to the old house opposite to hide from the limelight." Kim hesitated at the door, and Milina knew he was waiting for her kiss.But instead of going over, she turned around and forcibly controlled her dizzy body. "I'll come back after the limelight is over." Kim Penh said as he left. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door.Milina took one last look at the back door before opening it to let the police in.One is about thirty years old, but has a pair of calm and steady eyes.The other is very young, and he keeps stroking his newly grown mustache with his hands. "I'm McKinnon," said the older policeman. "This is Jack." He looked at the pamphlet and asked, "Is there a man named King here? Do you know him?" "He's my husband." "Is he here now?" "No." "You don't mind if we go inside and have a look!" "Please." Milina stepped aside to make way for them.McKinnon searched the back bedroom while Jack looked around the front. "Are you reading, ma'am?" Jack asked. "I'm doing palmistry, is there a ban on palmistry in this city?" Jack just smiled awkwardly. "I didn't even think about it, I was just interested. Last week, my wife brought home a deck of cards that I couldn't figure out at all, and my wife didn't really understand, but they still played well. " "That kind of card is hard to master." "I think it must be." McKinnon said back. "There's no one behind." "Not here either," said Jack. Staring at the blotter, McKinnon asked, "When was the last time you saw your husband?" "That's all right, you'll never see him," said Milina. "We just want to ask him some questions." "You'll never catch him," Milina repeated.She knows it's true. For when Kim opened the curtains and the sun shone on his face, he saw the signs of her husband's death. McKinnon said displeasedly: "Ma'am, I advise you that you'd better come with us]..." The sound of a brick wall collapsing behind the store interrupted McKinnon, and a scream of pain was heard, followed by another There was a sound of collapse, and then there was no sound at all.The two policemen glanced at each other and ran for the back door. Milina sat down at the table, folded her hands in front of her.When the ambulance pulled Kim's body away, she still sat there.McKinnon asked the necessary questions, jotting down the main points, while Jack stood uneasily behind.Milena was still sitting with her hands folded when the two officers walked out the front door. A minute later, Jack was back. "Madam, I just want to tell you that I am very sad about your husband. I am also newly married, and I can imagine the feeling of losing my husband." Milina was excited for the first time.She buried her head in her hands and shouted, "Go, please go away." Jack stood by the door for a moment until his companion ran up behind him. "Come on, Jack! We've been notified that robbers are in the vicinity." Jack made a gesture to say something, but seeing that Milina didn't look up, he had to turn around, and ran thoughtfully with McKinnon to the police car on the side of the road. After a while, Milina straightened up, her dark eyes filled with tears.Thinking, "It would be nice if you didn't come back. Jack, you're young and full of life, don't give a damn!" It turned out that she saw signs of death on Jack's face again.